


Keepsake

by mollysynthetic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Ghosts, M/M, Minor Jonah Magnus/Mordechai Lukas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollysynthetic/pseuds/mollysynthetic
Summary: Out of everyone with a reason to want revenge on Jonah Magnus, Barnabas Bennett is the only one who haunts him.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30
Collections: Jonah Magnus Week 2020





	Keepsake

**Author's Note:**

> This is fragmented and low on details, but I still think I should probably warn for anachronisms. I don't know enough about the 19th century to write it properly.
> 
> Written for Jonah Magnus Week and the prompt Jonah Magnus/Barnabas Bennett, Ghost AU.
> 
> Unbetaed, as it was only just finished in time.

"It's the ghost stories in particular that bother me," Jon says, with a look on his face that says _I can't believe I'm actually saying these words, all of this is bollocks_. "Almost all of them are... well, they're even more outlandish than the others."

"I'm sure I've come across quite a few very well documented cases," Jonah answers.

"Maybe they're archived separately," Jon muses. "Gertrude's organisational system was abysmal, it's possible she categorised–"

"If there wasn't anything else?" Jonah asks before Jon can go off on another tirade about Gertrude. He's been the Archivist for no more than a month, and is desperately trying to establish himself as the alpha of his pathetic little team. His efforts present as a perpetual scowl, him overworking his assistants and a tendency to come to "Elias" with every little thing he doesn't know how to handle. In this case a report about a ghost that Jonah knows, without even glancing at it, that it's made up.

Jonah steers Jon out of his office and returns to his desk.

Everyone who works in the archives long enough notices this. Among all the stories that are brought to the Institute, remarkably few are about ghosts. Certainly very few of the interesting ones. The Spiral does manifest as apparitions every now and then, but those aren't actual hauntings, just tricks played on susceptible minds.

The reason that real ghost stories rarely reach the Institute is, simply, that most ghosts aren't a manifestation of fear.

Jonah should know.

*

Out of everyone with a reason to want revenge on Jonah Magnus, Barnabas Bennett is the only one who haunts him.

*

Barnabas was marked by the Lonely long before he got himself on the wrong side of Mordechai Lukas. It was evident in his discomfort at dinners and parties, in his clumsy attempts at connecting with other people, in his tendency to pull away, keep to himself. It was there in the shyness of his eyes when Jonah caught his wrist on one of those occasions, after a dinner at Jonah's townhouse, and asked him where he was going, "The night is still young, Bennett, why are you leaving us?"

Barnabas had tried to pull free, and blushed when Jonah held him fast and looked him steadily in the eyes.

"I'm just tired," he'd said.

"Well then, please, let me take you to your room," Jonah had said, and not listened when Barnabas had protested that he knew where his room was.

He was marked, yes, but not _taken_. It wasn't hard for Jonah to worm his way into Barnabas' bed, give the Lonely a little competition.

Its mark was still there after, though, when Barnabas hid his heated face in Jonah's neck, and when he snuck away before dawn even though this was his room.

He was always going to be either a servant of the Lonely, or its victim.

*

Jonah saw Barnabas one last time in the real world after his altercation with Mordechai. He knew at once that Barnabas' fate was sealed. The Lonely no longer wound itself around him like a fond cat, now it lay heavy and possessive around his neck, had seeped as a dull fog into his eyes. He kept rubbing them unconsciously, making them red and puffy. Barnabas had always had a youthful look to him, but now he looked _aged_.

"I don't know what's wrong with me lately," he complained to Jonah over tea. He didn't mention his meeting with Lukas (which Jonah, of course, already knew about). "It's like I'm..." he rubbed at his eyes again, "not really here, or... I'm sorry, I'm not making any sense."

Jonah hummed.

"I'm sure it will pass," Barnabas said with a weak smile, as if reassuring himself when no comfort was forthcoming from Jonah. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't bother you with this nonsense."

They sat in awkward silence for a while. When they took their farewells, Barnabas caught Jonah's hand in his. It was unusual that Barnabas touched _him_ , and not the other way around. Had this been at any other time, Jonah would have been delighted, but now Barnabas' cold, clammy touch made him nauseated. He suppressed a shudder and made himself squeeze Barnabas' hand before letting him go. Literally as well as figuratively.

*

It took a long time for Barnabas to fade, in the Forsaken.

*

For a long time, Jonah is haunted by a man who isn't even dead. In a way, they haunt each other; one watching impassively from one side, the other trying desperately to make contact from the other.

Barnabas has been gone for two months or so when he shows up at the Institute. Jonah sees him, clear as day, even though no one else does. Not moving from his office, he tracks Barnabas as he slowly makes his way through the Institute's halls and corridors. Time passes differently in the Lonely. At one point Barnabas lies down for a nap, and Jonah has to spend a week stepping over his sleeping form every time he enters or exits his office.

One morning he finds Barnabas sat at Jonah's own desk, writing. Jonah stands behind him for a while, watching a letter slowly take shape.

Once swallowed by the Lonely, Barnabas no longer looks sick, and his eyes are no longer red. Nor has he regained his youthful countenance, but he's gained a new kind of beauty, the beauty of a desperate man clinging to one last hope.

Jonah, being that hope, presses an unnoticed kiss to the top of Barnabas' head.

*

Eventually, Barnabas leaves the Institute. Jonah keeps track of him as he walks aimlessly through the streets of Edinburgh, but as the weeks pass he gets harder and harder to find. One morning Jonah can't perceive him at all, and he gets dressed in a hurry before setting off towards the last place he'd seen him, in a miniscule park wedged in behind a church in Old Town.

Barnabas is still there, sitting immobile on the ground with his back against a tree. He's alive, if only barely. His breaths are too slow to be visible. Jonah sits down, imagines he can feel the warmth of a living body next to his. After some time, he puts his face to Barnabas' neck, looking for the scent that should be there.

He sits there for far longer than he wants to admit even to himself. When he gets up to leave, he sees that Barnabas has closed his eyes.

*

The next morning, Jonah wakes up in Mordechai Lukas' bed. As Mordechai's house is always empty of any servants he doesn't bother to get dressed, only wraps himself in a dressing gown before going to look for the man. He is vaguely surprised to actually find him having coffee in the library. Neither of them bothers with any pleasantries.

"You didn't have to take him," Jonah says.

"Of course I didn't."

"I would have paid his debts for him."

"With what, the money _my_ family gave you?"

"I think you were jealous."

Mordechai sighs. "Didn't we have this conversation already? I seem to recall something like this last night, except with shouting."

There had been shouting. Jonah had accused Mordechai of being jealous, Mordechai had accused Jonah of being manipulative. Then there had been shouting for a whole other reason, and Jonah had fallen asleep worn out and still angry. Today, he feels more empty than anything else.

"He was always my favourite," he snaps at Mordechai. "Don't ever think I'll be any fonder of you just because he's gone."

"And yet, here you are," Mordechai answers blandly.

Jonah leaves.

*

He avoids the park where Barnabas died for several years. When at last he goes back, there are no signs of Barnabas' body under the tree. He has to solicit Mordechai for help to cross over into the Lonely, where he collects the bones.

He doesn't notice until nightfall that it wasn't just Barnabas' bones he brought back with him.

*

"I knew you would come for me," Barnabas whispers into Jonah's neck with a voice that's more like a thought. "I just thought you'd come in time."

Jonah shifts away, but Barnabas follows him. He's clingy, now that the Lonely no longer has any claim on him.

"Do you know how long I waited for you? I suppose you do."

There is, not exactly a touch, more an _idea_ of hands coming up to drape over Jonah's shoulder.

"Anyway. I'm free from it now. I don't need to be lonely anymore."

Jonah makes a point never to answer the ghost when it talks to him.

*

Jonah spends his nights at Mordechai's house for a while. The ghost won't follow him there.

He finds out rather quickly that the ghost doesn't, in fact, follow him anywhere. It appears to be tied to the bones.

"You should probably get him a proper burial," Mordechai suggests.

"Would it bring him rest, do you think?"

Mordechai shrugs. "If it doesn't, isn't a graveyard the proper place for a restless spirit to roam?"

"Hm. He wasn't much for propriety, though, was he."

"Who amongst us is?"

*

Jonah brings the bones to his Institute. When the Institute moves down to London, they come too.

*

With each new body Jonah inhabits, Barnabas recognises him a little less. It's a relief. As used as Jonah has become to the spirit, it's an annoyance to have the ghost of a lover, however much missed, whisper its sad little secrets in his ear and feel the shadow of its attempted caresses.

By the time Jonah becomes James, the ghost stops trying to touch him. It has forgotten that it's dead. Sometimes it still remembers Jonah as someone who betrayed it. Other times, as someone who saved it. Those times are worse.

It never remembers anything from before the Lonely.

*

When Jonah shows up in the fresh-faced body of Elias Bouchard, the ghost looks at him curiously and says, _You remind me of someone I used to know_. It gives him one of those shy smiles that Barnabas used to give him.

Jonah looks back at it properly for the first time in decades. He sees the memory of someone he should have let go a long time ago.

"Would you like to rest?" he asks the memory.

It looks back at him, tilting its head a little, as if not understanding the question. Jonah sighs.

"Never mind," he says.

He has business to attend to in Scotland in a few weeks. He decides he'll bring Barnabas' bones and put him to rest there.

*

When Jonah makes his way to the panopticon for the final time, a small, white fingerbone rests in his breast pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> I am also [mollysynthetic](https://mollysynthetic.tumblr.com) at Tumblr.


End file.
